Guj govt to bring resolution in Assembly in support of CAA

The BJP government in Gujarat will bring a resolution in the upcoming one-day Assembly session of the state legislature on January 10 to extend its support to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), a state minister said on Thursday.

The new citizenship law seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees who came to India before December 31, 2014, to escape religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

However, the controversial legislation has sparked protests across the country.

A one-day session of the Gujarat Assembly has been convened on January 10 to approve a Constitutional amendment recently passed by both the Houses of Parliament to give a 10 -year extension to reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

"To extend our support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government's decision about the CAA, a resolution supporting the new law will be brought during the Assembly session," Pradeepsinh Jadeja, Gujarat's Minister of State for Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, said in Gandhinagar on Thursday.

"This law is a historic step towards granting citizenship rights to the minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh," he added.

The one-day session of the Assembly has been called by the Gujarat government to approve the 'Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Amendment) Bill, 2019', which was passed by the Parliament a month back, Jadeja said.

"It is mandatory that at least 50 per cent of the state Assemblies in the country approve this Constitutional amendment. Only then it will be sent for President's assent. We have, therefore, called this session on January 10 to approve it," the minister said.

Since it is the first Assembly session of the new year, Governor Acharya Devvrat would inaugurate the session with his address, followed by a resolution to thank him for the speech, Jadeja said.